Speed run of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with only dark-side choices in 26 segments, completed on July 1 2005. Available in 320x240 and 800x600 versions.

Author's comments:
Hello Meatbags. This is my inaugural Speed Run: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on Normal. Kotor: The game that proved Yoda has a speech impediment. SW: KOTOR is one of my all-time favorite games. It is also one of the few games that I consider myself good at. I played through it several times and then I discovered this site and planned to speed run it. I felt that if I could get it under 7 hours I would consider that a success. I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. I plan to do some other speed runs in the future, but one day I will tackle Kotor II: The Sith Lords as well as Kotor I for the XBOX. Perhaps I will also try an easy or hard run on Kotor for the PC.

This run is what I like to call a "Pure Darkside Run." I don't do a single good act, finish with a full darkside rating, and get the darkside ending. This is actually slower than playing the game as a darkside character and then finishing with a lightside ending, but since MNeMiC was doing a lightside ending run, I figured I would do a darkside one.

A warning to all speed run newbs recording on the PC: Make sure you know what you are doing before you start playing. I learned this the hard way. I did a run, compressed the video, deleted the original files, and tried to submit it only to find out the files were unacceptable. Lesson: don't delete the original files and ask questions first. At least I improved my run by about 10 minutes.

I would like to thank MNeMiC and Juncti for their help and for driving me to do my best. I would also like to thank Radix for helping me through all my video recording and compression problems, of which I had many. Finally I would like to thank Widgeon Infantry, TestaALT, JPaterson, and SirCerberus at Gamefaq's because their FAQ's on the game were invaluable in my pre-run preparations.

I would appreciate any suggestions or any, reasonable, criticisms of my run. Sub 3:30 is easily possible and 3:15 is probably the quickest the game could be done on normal. 3:00 would be insane. I look forward to the day that my run will be beaten so I can pick this game up again and try to reclaim the record.

Segment 1:

Character Creation:
I choose scout as my class because I felt it was just the right balance of speed and toughness. The Scoundrel is too weak and the Solider has too few bonuses. I could be wrong here, but I feel that the scout is the best class for Speed Running purposes.
Doing a quick character would probably be quicker, but it could cripple your character. Whenever you auto-level your characters they come out very badly, so I do it all manually. The portrait I picked is the one I always play with. I just think he looks cool. I can't tell you how mad I was that he wasn't included in the Sith Lords.
Dexterity and Strength are the keys. Putting a large amount into them is critical. I put a little into Wisdom to up my force power and Charisma to help with Persuade. The primary skills that are needed are Computer Skill, Treat Injury, and Persuade. I put one into security because it is critical to open locked doors at the beginning. As far as feats go I focused on offensive ones such as two-handed weapons, dueling, flurry, and weapons specialization. Toughness is also useful.
I choose the name lord Revan for reasons related to the game. It would probably spoil the game to explain, but if you are going to watch this video you're going to have much of the game spoiled anyway. I am mad because I forgot to capitalize Lord, but I didn't catch it until well into the run.

The Ravenger:
The great thing about this area is that you are invincible, at least until you get to the starboard section. This is why I am able to detonate a grenade at point blank range. The rest of this part is boring. You can't move on until you have killed all of the enemies, so that is why I have to fight here,

Uppercity:
You may wonder why I keep going into rooms and opening lockers and bags. This is because I desperately need computer spikes for later in the game. I am not totally sure about this, but the game appears to be random about what is in these lockers, so I have to check all of them. I went to the doctor and fought the bounty hunters in order to get money. I later found out that this was unnecessary, so if I ever run this game again, I will cut this part out. I also believe the bounties could be cut out as well. This probably could save around three or four minutes.

Lower City:
Nothing interesting here except that my guy died, showing his weakness. No problem though because Carth the destroyer was there to save me.

Segment 2:

Undercity:
Die Hendar Die HAHAHAHA! The Rakgouls are nasty. This was one of the few times I fought him and didn't die. I usually needed Carth to finish it off. You need to kill it for Mission to show up. Mission is by far the most useless character in the game. Luckily I only need her for this one part. This is probably my favorite trick in the game. Activate solo mode, rescue Zaalbar, and escape without even fighting. I return to the hideout in order to heal. It is faster than medpacs.

Vulkar Base:
Using the computer to kill the guys in the barracks is better than just opening the door because it gives you more exp., more items, and uses less spikes.

Segment 3:

Vulkar Garage:
I need the droid to kill the guards in the hall way. This saves time in my opinion. My character managed to survive the boss battle which is pretty rare. He would usually get taken out and then the Wookie would have to take the rest out. Probably the best battle against them I have ever done.

Swoop Race:
I go slowly the first time to make it easier to beat it the second time. You have to race two times no matter what. Brejik is pretty hard to hit so I just grenade him to death. There was a really weird glitch where every time I killed the guard next to me I would automatically die. Got really aggravating so I just stopped going after him first.

Segment 4:

Upper City part two:
Now I have a Jedi. Bastila is the worst Jedi in the game, but any Jedi is a good Jedi. Her speed force power is a life saver. I only take two people because two are less likely to have someone get stuck on a corner than three. Trust me this happens a lot. This is why I had the camera backwards at one point, to make sure Revan didn't get stuck.

Sith Base:
Now we get to the reason why I needed the spikes: To shut down the droid shield and the turrets. The droid is nearly impossible to kill with them up. It is easy to get the elevator key so it is much more important to do the shields and turrets. I use the droid because of his high computer skill.

Segment 5:

Sith Base:

The Dark Jedi is the third hardest boss in the game, as weird as that sounds. It took me a good hour to figure out how to kill him effectively. The best strategy seemed to be taking Carth and putting him behind the Jedi. Doing that and luck got me through him.

Segment 6:

Davik's Base:
I wish there was a faster way through this level, but I don't know how without acquiring more spikes. The robots are pretty dangerous so caution is needed. You only need to take out Calo Nord to beat this area so I just focused my attacks on him. Piece of cake. The robots were more dangerous than them.

Segment 7:

Dantooine:
Harder area than it looks. Juhani is the only area where death is a possibility, but there is a ton of areas for little mistakes. I don't think this level can be done any faster. There were some obvious slowdown problems, but I tried to minimize them. If anyone knows how to fix this problem please tell me. I couldn't figure it out.
This is also the area where it is proven positive that Yoda has a speech impediment. The Yoda guy here talks normal. Why can't Yoda. 700 years old and still has a problem speaking? Apparently vocal cords are immune to the power of the force.

Segment 8:

Korriban:
I needed at least 2 persuade to get in the academy without a fight.

Segment 9:
This is where I get to the key part of my run: The Sith Code Experience bug. I basically repeat the code over and over again getting 150 Exp. per attempt. This appears to take a lot of time off my run, but I believe it to be more efficient than trying to level up normally through the game. To complete the game, I believe that taking time to level up is a necessity, at least on normal. I probably leveled up more than necessary. I did do a good job though, because I didn't mess up once.

Segment 10:
I believe that the fastest to get to the Tomb of Naga Sadow is by betraying Yathura, the interrogation, killing the renegade students, and Ajunta Pall's blade. The only one I am unsure about is the students, but I believe it is faster than Tulak Hord's or Marko Ragno's Tombs.

Segment 11:
The Tarentateks are nasty and to be avoided at all cost. The rest of the area is easy.

Segment 12 and 13:

Tatooine:
Ok I suck at this level. This is not to say that I did a poor run here, but I had to do it many times to do it well. I did two segments when it should be one. I just keep making little mistakes. I keep getting killed by the Sand People Chief and it got really annoying. Also Juhani keep attacking far away creatures which would bring my run to a screeching halt.
I feel a great sadness in not getting HK-47. He is one of the greatest characters in videogame history. He just costs to much, wastes time, and isn't very good at fighting. Other than that he's great. I will probably include a HK-47 greatest moments in one of my future Kotor runs.

Segment 14 and 15:

Maanan:
My favorite level. Other than Darth Bandon, I don't need to kill anyone. Darth Bandon isn't even part of the level. If you did this level 2nd or 4th then no enemies would even have to be killed. I run this level near perfect. The only real mistake is forgetting to activate force speed before leaving to get the star map and having to go back and do it. Poor fish people I polluted their water. Oh well at least they were nice enough to bring me to my ship than making me walk. That would have been much more annoying than being kicked off the planet.

Segment 16 and 17:

The Leviathan:
The Juhani sequence is the best method I could do and I think it is the fastest in the game. I could be mistaken. The Saul battle is by far the hardest battle in the game. It may have been easier if I had used the Thermal Detonators, but I was saving them for Malak. Malak is really easy at this stage. No wonder he needs the power of the Star Forge. Mission could probably take him out.

Segment 18:

Kashyyyk:
I do pretty well in this area. Leveling up Jolee may be unnecessary and a huge waste of time due to the fact I was playing darkside. I could have saved time by just soloing the level, although jolee dying may have slowed me down as much. When I do this game again I will test this.

Segment 19:

The Unknown World:
I have never actually tried doing the warrior side and thus have always done the Priest side. I have no idea which is faster, but the warrior temple is still very easy. My characters are killing machines by this point. I could have saved about a minute by soloing more, but I didn't think of it until after my run was over. Have to do it next time.
I probably could have made it through the temple without Jolee leveled up, but as long as I had him I was going to use him. He is a killer. Hard to say whether Juhani or he are better, but they are both good.

Segment 20:

The Unknown World:
I saved before the tile floor because it alone could bring a run to a screeching halt. Moving with precision is not one of the positives of KOTOR.
In choosing a darkside run, siding with Bastilia is, unfortunately, a necessity. She is really weak for a Jedi. Juhani and, especially, Jolee rock in the final level. Hear that kids? Being evil has its downsides.

Segment 21:

Star Forge:
I am forced to level up Canderous. This is another major hit for playing darkside. It takes up a ton of time to level him. Probably should have just auto-leveled him. At least he is good for a blaster character, which I can't say for Bastila. She sucks royally. First level is a bit difficult due to the fact that only my character has destroy droid. On my initial lightside run I went through this much faster.

Segment 22:

Star Forge:
The second level is hit or miss. I have no idea what causes your characters to warp to the end. On most of my runs it would take well over two minutes for them to appear. This was a pretty good time, but I have done better. If someone knows what triggers the warp, please tell me. I ran through with Canderous because he always took the longest to die when I tried it with my character so I figured he should be the one to run through it. Works best in my opinion.

Segment 23 and 24:

Star Forge:
The third level is where force lightning comes in handy. Taking out all of those guys alone without force lighting would have been incredibly difficult. The three dark Jedi are fairly easy.

Segment 25 and 26:

Star Forge
Darth Malak is not that hard for the final boss. It did take me quite a while to figure out how to beat him, but once I found out he wasn't very hard. Saul's battle is much harder because it is far more random. Malak is predictable. Saber attacker and lightning. No big deal. He does deal out a ton of damage and is incredibly hard to hit. Just take his life down, kill all the captive Jedi, use all your stims, and then saber him. I use the thermal detonators even though it was unnecessary. Looked cool though.

Conclusion:

This run is far from perfect. Since completing this run I have had many ideas for how to improve it, but I will wait a while to try another run. This game took a long time to complete and I would rather try some shorter games in the future. If you would like to know some of my ideas for how to improve a Kotor run just ask me. I would like to hold this record for a while, but not at the cost of having the game fester. I would like other people to try speed running this game so I can try to beat them. That is part of the fun of speed running. I hope that people enjoy my run and I hope to get my next run out pretty soon.

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